1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to online shopping via the Internet. More specifically, it relates to a customizable online shopping basket for supporting an online purchasing business process.
2. General Background and Related Art
Most e-commerce Websites (e.g., amazon.com, netgrocer.com) do not adequately address the differences between “shoppers” and “buyers.” Shoppers browse Websites for products they are interested in purchasing, but buyers make the actual purchase. “Shoppers” put items in a shopping basket and “buyers” actually purchase the items.
In a physical store, parents can bring their children to a store and allow them to put anything they want into in their own shopping baskets. At the checkout stand, however, all contents contained in each of the baskets are merged to one basket, and during the merging process, a parent can remove any unwanted items. The merging of items between the baskets enables the transfer of the items to the hands of a buyer, who can actually make the purchase. It also enables a transfer of items from a first person that wants to buy something to a second person that decides if the first person needs it.
It is known to send an item chosen by a shopper to another party for purchase of the item. For example, the Dell Online Store for PC purchases <http://gigabuys.us.dell.com/store/index.asp> will allow a person to send a PC system price quote to someone else to view. It does not, however, have the ability to transfer and combine multiple items from other shopping baskets.
It is also known in the art to use an online “wish list” at Websites (e.g., www.amazon.com and www.etoys.com) to let potential buyers know what items a shopper would like to have. A wish list allows buyers to examine and purchase items chosen by a shopper as potential gifts for the shopper. The wish list, however, cannot merge its contents with other wish lists and it cannot be customized.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,141, titled “Internet-Based Customer Referral System,” issued Feb. 22, 2000, discloses an online shopping cart that allows a customer to select products from multiple different sites, and then perform a single check-out to purchase all of the selected products. The patent says, however, that although the use of a shopping cart provides certain advantages for the invention, other features of the invention, such as the referral tracking and crediting features, are most pertinent and can be implemented without use of a shopping cart. In addition, the shopping cart cannot merge its contents with those in other shopping carts and it cannot be customized.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,709, titled “Dynamic Data Assembling on Internet Client Side,” issued Sep. 21, 1999, also discloses an online shopping cart. The disclosure is exemplary of a method to assemble data into a data set on a client computer that is necessary for performing transactions between an Internet server computer and a client computer. The shopping cart, however, cannot merge its contents with those in other shopping carts and it cannot be customized.
Online e-commerce shopping traditionally has a low basket-to-buy ratio. This means that online baskets are often abandoned before they reach the online checkout stand. One reason for this is that the buyer verbally may disapprove of the shopper's chosen items.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to allow multiple parties participating in an online purchase to interact with and exert control over items that are purchased.